Hitch assemblies for evenly distributing the tongue weight of a trailer over the front and rear wheels of a towing vehicle are well known in the art. A particularly advanced design of weight distributing hitch assembly is disclosed in the assignee's patent application, Ser. No. 08/138,172, filed Oct. 15, 1993 and entitled Weight Distributing Hitch and now U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,867. This hitch assembly includes a hitch bar for mounting to the vehicle and a ball mount head for mounting on the hitch bar at a selected tilt angle. A pair of spring bars are mounted to the ball mount head. These spring bars distribute the weight of the trailer relative to the vehicle. Each spring bar is substantially L-shaped and includes a turned groove at a proximal end that is received in a cooperating aperture in the ball mount head. A retainer of spring steel engages in the grooves to hold the spring bars in position.
While the spring bar retainer in this design is secured to the ball mount head so that it will not be lost or misplaced, the retainer is still present near the area where the trailer tongue and coupler must be positioned over the hitch ball. This creates the potential for the retainer becoming inadvertently engaged by the heavy trailer and being bent or otherwise damaged during the trailer connection operation. Accordingly, it is desirable to eliminate the need for any separate spring bar retainer component to secure the spring bars in position. Thus, a need is identified for a weight distributing hitch assembly of improved design that eliminates the need for a separate retaining component for the spring bars.